


While I'm Gone, Dream Me the World

by clover_magus



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: AU in which the Gangsey never met, Adam Parrish Has Self-Esteem Issues, Alternate Universe - Psychedelic Dreams, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Child Abuse, Dead People, Dreams and Nightmares, Dreamsharing, Ghosts, M/M, Major Character Injury, Minor Character Death, Near Death Experiences, Past Character Death, Richard Gansey III is a Good Friend, Robert Parrish Is His Own Warning, Ronan Lynch Makes Bad Choices, Ronan Lynch Needs a Hug, Ronan Lynch is the Unfortunate and Unwilling Dream Guide for the Dead, Substance Abuse, Temporary Character Death, When People Die They Have To Travel Through Their Dreams
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:14:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25365196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clover_magus/pseuds/clover_magus
Summary: When Ronan went to sleep that night, he expected to dream. He knew, as he simply knew many things related to dreams, that he would wander into the mind of someone dead or dying. Someone long past saving. He would spend the night ensuring they do not get lost in the complex architecture of their ailing minds. He would guide them through their nightmares if the terrors arrived, or stay with them through their last chance to fantasize. The Reaper and the Sandman are one in the same, and his name is Ronan Lynch.What he did not expect was to dream of Adam Parrish.*When Ronan Lynch falls asleep, he walks through the final dreams of the dying, unable to save them from their fate. When he dreams of his classmate Adam Parrish, who risks being lost in his own nightmares, Ronan sets out to save him from himself.
Relationships: Noah Czerny & Richard Gansey III, Noah Czerny & Ronan Lynch, Richard Gansey III & Adam Parrish, Richard Gansey III & Ronan Lynch, Ronan Lynch & Blue Sargent, Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 15
Kudos: 62





	1. A Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Story Title from The Dream Thieves, Maggie Stiefvater
> 
> What if Ronan's gift was just a little different? What if Adam and Gansey never became friends? What if Ronan wasn't there when Robert Parrish hit his son?

“You know,” the old woman mused. “Of all the angels to take me from this world, you are not what I was expecting.”

Ronan quirked an eyebrow. He supposed he couldn’t fault her for thinking him an angel of the Lord, but one look at him made the idea completely outlandish. Shaved head, sharp eyes, clad in black and leather. Ronan couldn’t help the corners of his mouth curling in amusement.

The woman was a stout, hunchbacked old woman with a fancy curl of grey hair. Ronan had seen her at church before, decked in costume pearls and obnoxiously bright skirts, tugging at her rosary, but he never learned her name. The woman knew him, of course. Most everyone at St. Agnes’ knew of the Lynch brothers. They were rather hard to miss. But if any of the Lynch brothers were more notorious than the others, it was Ronan Lynch, the middle brother.

“I’m no angel,” Ronan said, taking a seat beside the woman in the church pew. It creaked beneath his weight. If he was an angel, he’d have more direction in this endeavor. A divine plan. A job description, perhaps. “I’m just here to keep you company until your death fully takes hold”

“So this is dying, then. Not a dream.”

“It’s a dream. It’s also dying.”

The woman’s dream was about exactly what Ronan would’ve expected. The church pews they sat in were the same ones Ronan sat in every Sunday morning. But the dreary church walls were gone. They sat in an endless green field, with a cathedral door to nowhere behind them, Bibles on the grass beneath their seats, and a great Ash tree at the end of the aisle of seats before them. Ronan knew that if they walked in any direction, they would find themselves staying exactly where they were, like taking a stroll on a hamster wheel. Ronan wondered if they would stay here, if she would go peacefully. Maybe she would dream of her children or grandchildren for one last moment with them before she goes. Maybe she would want to hear the church choir again. It would not be the first time he’d experienced that.

The woman sighed. She took one of the Bibles out from under her seat and gripped it in her lap.

“I must say, I’m rather disappointed in myself,” she said. “Fell down the front steps. I was hoping to go out guns blazing.”

The thought of this jewelry-clad ninety-year-old woman of God charging into battle with a pair of handguns made Ronan smile. He let it happen. He will always let it happen for the people in his dreams. If he could not save them, and he never could, they deserved to see someone kinder than him in their final moments. He could pretend.

“Well, you have until you cross over, or until I wake up,” Ronan said. “What do you want to do?”

To the woman, it was a call to adventure. To Ronan, who knew she was already gone, it was just another failure.


	2. Something Ain't Right

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gansey was a collector of things and a collector of people. He saw Adam once and only once, and immediately told Ronan that the three of them were destined to be unforgettable friends. Ronan was less inclined toward the idea.  
> Nothing Ronan knew or did not know about Adam Parrish changed the hard truth of why the boy stood in front of him now. Adam was dying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ronan enters Adam's dreams, and it does not go smoothly.
> 
> Chapter Title: "Something Ain't Right" - Whiskey Neat

When sirens wail in Henrietta, it fails to catch any attention.

In a big city, the passing of an ambulance or fire truck is a near-daily occurrence. It draws no eyes, stops no conversations, poses no pressing questions. In a small town, rumors spread like a disease, mutating a little further through the next person’s whispered words. Henrietta was as small as any rural hick-town could get. Like with most things, though, it was stuck somewhere in the middle—in limbo between several worlds, the blurred connection between intersecting lines. The people of Henrietta preferred to stay in their lanes.

When the ambulance whirred down the Virginian roads with urgency, the townspeople turned their noses to the air like prairie dogs. Ladies in rocking chairs stopped crocheting. Men lowered their daily news. Teenagers gossiped momentarily, I bet someone died, then turned their heads, the noise forgotten. No rumors would be spread. The unknown would not prick annoyingly, worryingly at the hairs on their necks for the following days. They would move on and forget. The trees cared more for the dead than the men and women of Henrietta.

Ronan Lynch was the exception. If there was a person in the city who paid the most attention to those sirens, who watched the blaring lights of the ambulance whirring past his BMW that summer evening with his heart hammering in his chest, it was him.

Ronan Lynch had a gift. It made little sense to him, yet made all the sense in the world. Ronan believed as all good Catholics do that death is not the end, but the Catholics could never estimate a proper wait time for the line to get through the heavenly gates. Where do people go when they die? How are they welcomed? How long do they wait to get settled in? Several years after realizing his gift, Ronan thought he found the answer.

A place somewhere in the middle. Somewhere stuck in limbo between several worlds, the blurred connection between intersecting lines. The threshold between life and death, between awake and dreaming. Where is the train station that takes someone’s soul to hell or heaven?

In dreams, of course. Where else could it be?

It made sense that there should be someone who could guide the dead through their dreams. Cultures across the world had their journeys to the other side, their _katabases_ , their psychopomps, and ghostly travelers. Often, those journeys were fraught with demons. Someone has to ensure the dead make it to their destination. Ronan just couldn’t understand why that person had to be him.

When Ronan went to sleep that night, he expected to dream. He knew, as he simply knew many things related to dreams, that he would wander into the mind of someone dead or dying. Someone long past saving. He would spend the night ensuring they do not get lost in the complex architecture of their ailing minds. He would guide them through their nightmares if the terrors arrived, or stay with them through their last chance to fantasize. The Reaper and the Sandman are one and the same, and his name is Ronan Lynch.

What he did not expect was to dream of Adam Parrish.

In his dream, Ronan was in Latin class at Aglionby. On the chalkboard, in his own haphazard penmanship, was a dirty joke he had written that morning, badly conjugated Latin verbs, and a countdown for a pop quiz— _Quiz in Eight Days_ —he had no recollection of writing.

The room was awash in a rainy, grey light from the windows lining the classroom. It was cold and empty save for the sawdust colored boy sitting at one of the desks, looking into his hands.

Adam was in his Aglionby uniform. There was something caked on the collar of his sweater, brown and sickening, and barely-there like bloody watercolor. His eyes were absent. He looked, Ronan thought, like someone who had walked through hell and feared recollecting the tale. Ronan had seen that same look in the mirror many, many times.

In the last year that Ronan had known of Adam Parrish, the only impression he had gathered was presumptuous at best. But from what he had heard from Gansey (who seemed minorly obsessed with the boy for God knows why), Adam Parrish was an anomaly at Aglionby Academy—a genius scholarship student destined for greatness, a diamond in the ruff, a rags-to-riches story in the making. Kind of an uncongenial asshole, but who was Ronan to make that judgment call?

Gansey was a collector of things and a collector of people. He saw Adam once and only once, and immediately told Ronan that the three of them were destined to be unforgettable friends. Ronan was less inclined toward the idea.

Nothing Ronan knew or did not know about Adam Parrish changed the hard truth of why the boy stood in front of him now. Adam was dying.

“Parrish?” Ronan breathed. It was quiet, but this was Adam’s dream. He could have heard it if Ronan said it miles away. He twisted around in his seat slowly, his reaction was delayed. His dusty hair bobbed against the natural laws of physics in the strange way things in dreams often do. He narrowed his eyes at Ronan.

“Huh,” Adam hummed. “I’ve never dreamt of you before.”

“Ouch,” Ronan deadpanned. Adam shrugged.

He looked to his hands again and stretched his fingers in front of him to examine them. They were long, spindly things with thick joints and were finely calloused. His skin was dry. When he moved, white flakes tumbled from the backs of his hands down to the floor.

“You know, it’s strange. Everything about this place tells me that I’m dreaming, but I count all my fingers.”

“What?”

“I can never count my fingers in my dreams,” Adam said. “They’re always too many, but I have ten now. How can this be a dream?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Ronan said and plopped himself on the desk beside Adam, bracing himself for a very tough conversation. “Maybe this one is real.”

Adam huffed agitatedly. “It can’t be both real and a dream.”

“Try again.”

“How can it be both real and a dream?” Adam corrected. He was quick. Ronan understood why Gansey liked him. Gansey wanted friends who could keep up with him.

“Sleep is the closest thing the living have to death,” Ronan said. “What do you think?”

Adam seemed to consider this. He looked at his hands again and brought one to ghost over the back of his head. He flinched when his fingers brushed his temple. They came away bloodstained.

“I fell,” Adam murmured to himself. Ronan winced. Adam turned to him but did not look at him. “I fell and my father was yelling and then … then … everything was so blurry.”

Adam finally looked at him. “Why am I dreaming of you? I don’t even know you.”

Ronan scoffed. He caught on fast enough, but his attitude made Ronan want to deck him with a newspaper. “I’m not a dream, jackass.”

“Haha.”

“Would I lie to you?”

“Probably,” Adam said and Ronan gritted his teeth. “I don’t know you.”

“Then get to know me.” Ronan planted his fist on the desk and bore into Adam’s icy stare. His eyes were almost as cold as Ronan’s. He wondered what made them that way. “I’m not a dream thing, Parrish. I just help you move on. I entered your dreams. Your final dreams.”

Adam’s eyes widened. “You’re real.” He said it like a curse.

Ronan could feel the dream world shiver and break as the boy let shock overwhelm him. His hair stood on end. Wind whistled outside the classroom. Branches scraped against the windows. Then something crashed through them.

The two boys whirled around toward the noise. At Adam’s feet lied a raven, twitching painfully in a pool of glass shards. Ronan felt the dream speed up, thrumming like an anxious pulse. He could hear the blood rushing to his ears.

Sometimes, there were those who did not take the news of their own death very well. Sometimes, their death was violent and painful, and they remembered every moment and suffered even in their dreams. Sometimes, they were just especially prone to emotional outbreaks that were particularly difficult to deal with. Ronan had been thrown out of a dream by the other’s nightmares before. Ronan is not sure how he knows, but he knows that if he cannot help them find peace, they will be trapped in that nightmare for eternity.

Ronan needed to keep Adam calm until he could pass on normally. Ronan stood up as the dream quaked, the lights above them flickering and swinging in the aftershocks. He gripped Adam by the shoulders and spoke calmly, but sternly.

“Parrish,” Ronan barked to get his attention. It worked. “Parrish, you need to breathe. Chill out, man.”

Adam shot out of his chair. Ronan tripped backward over the dead raven. Adam shouted something at him, angry and insinuating, but the dream was too unstable and Ronan only heard a sharp ringing in his ears growing louder and louder. 

Ravens crashed through the windows, shattering the whole wall and forcing Adam to duck under his desk. Ronan yelled as glass lodged in his skin and writhed in pain. His ears bled.

“ADAM STO—”

Ronan awoke to Gansey holding his bleeding arms to the bed. His hair was a mess. His glasses were missing. He was in his boxers. He was yelling at Ronan. He looked as afraid as Ronan felt. He looked exactly like he did when Ronan collapsed at Gansey’s feet and told him he’d lost Noah, all those years ago. Adam was nowhere to be seen.

He had been kicked out of the dream. Adam was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters of a new story in one day? And an outline of 8 more chapters to boot? I MUST be procrastinating on something.
> 
> \- C.M.


	3. I Am Still Right Here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adam ran his hand over the steering wheel, an older style, bumpy and warped with time. His boney thumb grazed a familiar Chevrolet insignia at its center. He had seen this car before. He knew it’s divots and rips and scratches as if he had lived in it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Adam is befuddled by dreams. Gansey drags Ronan on a quest to St. Raphael's.
> 
> Chapter Title: "Hurt" by Johnny Cash

One could easily get lost in this place, Adam thought, because he was surely lost.

He had not moved so much as a step since Ronan had been blown away with the violent wind. That was not exactly what happened, because Adam had felt no breeze. Nonetheless, Ronan had become flecks of black sand and simply blew away. That was very dream-like, Adam thought. This was all very dream-like. If this was a dream, it was entirely possible that he had fabricated Ronan, which would potentially be easier to stomach. He wasn’t one to read too much into the meaning of dreams. But something about this world staunchly said it was not a dream.

Adam was never creative, not in the whimsical sense. This dream world was only imagination and impossibility. There were no rules and it made his head hurt. He could not place the exact moment that the Latin classroom faded away, but it was gone. He was left in the seat of a car, keys in the ignition, engine warm and alive.  
Nice was a strong word for the car. It looked like it had once been nice, several decades prior. The leather upholstery was cracked and faded, torn in some places, revealing a honey yellow foam. The car rumbled sickly beneath him like it had a bad cough. Perhaps there was a leak in the exhaust. Maybe the owner was just using the wrong engine oil. He itched to dip his hands under the hood. The air at his feet was overheating. It was the kind of oldies car Adam could not hope to afford, nor would he particularly choose it, but he desperately wanted to have the choice of affording.

Adam ran his hand over the steering wheel, an older style, bumpy and warped with time. His boney thumb grazed a familiar Chevrolet insignia at its center. He had seen this car before. He knew it’s divots and rips and scratches as if he had lived in it. It nagged at him.

Outside was the countryside. Classic Virginian vegetation looked damp, but the petrichor that usually came with the rain was absent. The air was thick and hot. It felt more like the world was sweating in exertion. Adam fiddled with the AC dials, but they were useless.

The heat was stifling, but the shiver that danced across Adam’s neck was like an alarm. He adjusted the mirror and saw the doublewide on Antietam Lane behind him. It was shadowcast before a bright red setting sun. Orange light spilled from the windows like molten metal. A distant beat sounded from within it. It was an engendering sound. It was uneven and harsh, like a box of heavy storage tumbling down the stairs or the grumble of the car beneath him. It replayed and replayed and replayed. The door to the trailer creaked open, that bright light flooding the stairs with the broken rail. He didn’t stick around to see who turned the handle.  
Adam didn’t know how to drive a stick shift, but he put one foot on the brake, one foot on the gas, and struggled with the gears. He stepped down hard and left a trail of dust behind him. The house grew small and disappeared.

“Explain it to me again.”

Ronan growled at Gansey. His arms had been covered in gauze after he'd clawed at them in his sleep. He nursed his head with a bag of frozen carrots he and his roommate will never eat. Thirty minutes prior, Gansey had hit his dear friend with one of his own boots to wake him up, unaware of the boots’ steel toes. Upon politely asking Gansey why he hit him with a shoe instead of pouring water on him or something, Gansey simply replied that the option was not apparent at the time, and he should be granted forgiveness due to his panicked state. Ronan then hit him with the same shoe. A bruise would most certainly be forming on Gansey’s arm soon.

“I don’t understand,” Gansey complained, after hearing the story a second time. Ronan, maturely, did not hit Gansey with his shoe again.

“What about this do you not understand?”

“He can’t be dead, Ronan.”

“Well, he fucking is, okay? He freaked out, I couldn’t control the dream, I got kicked out. He’s fucking gone. It’s probably going in the paper or something.”

High school genius dies tragically, Ronan thinks up. Knowing the way the Aglionby school publication spun their stories, it would probably be something more along the lines of Scholarship student dies tragically. There was a difference. He wishes he knew more about Adam Parrish to come up with a better headline. If only saying Rest in Peace, Adam Parrish was good enough. If only saying go with God, amen meant anything to Adam Parrish, who may very well still be stuck in that dream, farther from God than Hell could ever be.

Gansey shook his head resolutely and stood. He paced in the small space of Ronan’s room, still in his boxers. They were white and clean and Gansey should really be wearing pants considering his bedroom in this household was the entire damn apartment.

“No, absolutely not. Not until I see the words, the official words, for myself. I’m going to go find a paper—no, they wouldn’t be published yet …” Gansey trailed off. He bit his thumb.

“Gansey.”

“Not Adam, Ronan.”

“Gansey,” Ronan tried again.

“I know you don’t know him very well, but he deserves so much more!”

“Nobody deserves it.”

The two boys grew so silent that Ronan could hear Gansey swallow. Gansey crossed his arms and breathed harshly into one of his hands. Ronan wanted Gansey to yell at him. When Ronan got that tattoo, Gansey never told him that he should know better. When he found Ronan bleeding from his wrists after a dream, he didn’t call Ronan selfish. When Noah died and Ronan watched him slip away, Gansey was never angry with him. He never blamed Ronan for anything. Sometimes, Ronan thought he should.

Gansey’s worry was tangible. It was a wooden dam threatening to break under the pressure, water spilling and spouting from the splinters. The water would overflow no matter what and Gansey needed a place to redirect the stream. The moment Gansey finally settled on a game plan, the noise settled to the dull roar of a river flowing through a new canal. With manufactured confidence and a path mapping itself out before him, Gansey clapped his hands.

“The nearest hospital is St. Raphael’s right?” Gansey asked. “If something happened, he’d have been rushed to the hospital. We’ll go there. See what they know.”

“If he didn’t die on the spot.”

“Ronan,” Gansey warned. When he said ‘Ronan,’ it sounded like a snake’s rattle. “We’re going to the hospital.”

It was raining when they made it to the hospital. The sky seemed to growl. The clouds mirrored the asphalt beneath them. When Ronan opened the door of the car, he thought about a casket being lowered into the ground, surrounded by green grass and bright sunbeams. He couldn’t remember whose casket it was. He wondered what that said about him. To have attended so many funerals and paid so little attention to them. Ronan shut the door of the Pig and covered his eyes from the rain. Gansey rushed around the other side, pulling the neck of his coat higher, and together they walked briskly into the hospital.  
Ronan used to think hospitals smelled like death until he witnessed it himself. The hospital smelled like nothing. It smelled like the absence of life. Stagnant. Empty. A vacuum.

Gansey shook the water off his jacket at the door and made his way to the reception desk. He planted both palms on the counter and when the woman at the desk didn’t look up, he coughed. She turned to him.

“We’re looking for our friend, Adam Parrish,” Gansey said. “We heard he might be here.”

The woman looked up, seeming bored. She was a heavy-set woman in a cranberry uniform, her kinky hair tied back in a bun like she simply couldn’t be bothered with it anymore. Ronan knew the feeling. She typed something on her keyboard.

The woman hummed. “Visiting hours aren’t until 10 a.m., but I could send you up early in about thirty minutes if you don’t mind waiting,” she said, considering. “He was a little agitated this morning, the doctors asked for him to be left alone for a good while, but you should be good to visit soon.”  
Gansey released a breath. “What happened? His parents weren’t incredibly forthcoming. They were … stressed. We don’t know what’s going on.”  
Ronan made a sound. The woman refused to reveal any information, just that she would notify them when they could go to his room. Ronan pulled Gansey away from the reception desk. A sign pointed him in the direction of the cafeteria and Ronan twisted on his heels to head that direction with Gansey in tow.

“We need to eat,” Ronan said.

Gansey looked wistfully at the gift shop as they passed it. “We should get Adam flowers. And a card. Chocolate, maybe? Do they sell chocolate at hospitals? Oh, we should get him those socks, you know the thick ones with the rubber on the bottom?”

“Those are uncomfortable as shit.”

“Sandals, then.”

“Since when am I sensible one? Food first. Get well confectionaries later.”

After getting servings of juice boxes and hospital eggs and toast, Ronan had to wrangle Gansey away from the small row of bouquets in the gift shop. The man had spent ten whole minutes trying to find the perfect selection of gifts, and the flowers were just too difficult a choice to make. So Ronan snatched up a bouquet of chamomile and thrust it onto the counter. He tossed in a small yellow vase. Gansey paid.  
Gansey breathed. He asked why Ronan chose that flower among all the others in the shop. The flowers were all the same in the end; Lilies for life. Carnations for love. Salvia for healing. Forget-me-nots need no explanation. Bright yellow bouquets for baby boys. Green and pink ones for baby girls. Comparatively, chamomile was rather plain.

Ronan gathered Gansey’s wares in his arms and said, “Patience in adversity.”

Gansey’s brow quirked. “Where did you hear that?”

“Old Farmer’s Almanac.”

Gansey sighed a familiar note. “One of the greatest minds of the generation and he doesn’t even know it.”

“It’s fucking flowers, piss off.”

By the time they returned to the reception desk, the receptionist woman had been scouting for their return. She directed them to the fourth floor of the hospital. Ronan didn’t miss it when she glanced at the bundle Ronan carried and grimaced.

The fourth floor of St. Raphael’s Hospital was just as white and crisp and stifling as the rest of the hospital, but louder. Most of the hospital was unnervingly quiet, but not on the fourth floor. Gansey and Ronan exited the elevator and nearly collided with a rolling hospital bed, on which an old man was holding his side and groaning into a pink blanket. The nurse quickly maneuvered the heavy bed around the two boys in her way and entered the elevator. Receptionists made loud phone calls at the front desk. Pagers sounded throughout the halls. On another rolling bed against one of the hallway walls, two other young residents drowsily ate granola bars. It was busy. Ronan looked for a map on the wall, but instead found a sign above the front desk welcoming them to the ICU.

Approaching Adam’s room, Ronan felt his stomach tighten. There was a sudden pounding in his head as Gansey slowly turned around the edge of a closed door. Ronan didn’t look inside at first. Outside the room was a clipboard, which Ronan plucked off the wall and flipped through. He didn’t understand most of it. There were instructions for daily, scheduled care — fluids on IV, a slew of medication Ronan assumed were meant to fix issues caused by other medications, bandages that needed changing every few days, low levels of oxygen, some expressed confusion over a future stimulation program and who would be available to be a part of it —

“Gansey —” Ronan started. But Gansey came to the same conclusion for himself.

Beneath a baby blue blanket and a tangled system of wires lay Adam Parrish. He was still and pale. His sawdust colored hair was matted and mostly covered by bandages on his right side. Beneath the mess of wires connecting to heart monitors and IVs and oxygen tanks, Adam Parrish’s blond eyelashes fanned over bruised cheekbones. He was alive. Just barely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I could make about ten different real excuses for why I haven't updated in two months, but honestly, I just FORGOT and I'm SORRY.
> 
> What do you guys think so far?
> 
> \- C.M.


	4. I've Been Ghosting Along

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You could have saved me, Ronan,” Noah said, smiling. “You lied to Gansey. You could have saved me.”
> 
> Trigger Warning(s): substance abuse, dead body, ambiguously described panic attacks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gansey gets a surprising call. Ronan is haunted by ghosts, in a sense. Adam makes a deal.
> 
> Chapter Title: "Ghosting" - Mother Mother
> 
> (Spotify playlist link in the endnotes!)

Ronan’s eyes were beginning to strain. He flipped the light switch on the wall and shut the door with his heel. What grey light could be found through the thunderstorm settled pale and hazy over Adam Parrish. When Ronan had seen him last, he had been sunkissed and warm. Now, he looked ashen. Ronan only had two questions: how and why the _fuck_ is he alive?

Gansey flipped through the papers on Parrish’s clipboard, which Ronan had stolen from the door. He hummed.

“Head trauma,” Gansey said. “Some cuts and bruises from falling down stairs, too.”

Ronan scoffed. Gansey flashed a page where a note had been scribbled between a few lines. _Tripped on stairs_. Ronan didn’t believe it for a second. The dark bruise cresting around Parrish’s temple in a large oval told another story. Beneath the eye were the faint yellow remnants of an older mark. Whatever fight Parrish got into, it wasn’t the first one.

Ronan had experienced more than his fair share of pummelings, all of them self-inflicted in one way or another. Between the fights he instigated with his brother, the fights he asked for after school, and the fights his father taught him to win, he became rather adept at taking the hit and punching right back. More than once, Gansey had forced a pack of iced peas on Ronan’s face. But Ronan was a lost cause. Why Adam Parrish, Aglionby’s one and only perfect poverty case, was getting into fights like this, Ronan didn’t understand.

“Why don’t we have any friends in the medical field?” Gansey asked. “That seems like an oversight. I don’t know what this stimulation program is.”

“He’s in a coma, Gansey. It’s probably something about stimulating that genius brain of his. Like in physical therapy,” Ronan thought aloud. He added, “Don’t look at me, I don’t understand brain shit.”

“The nurses are worried nobody will help. I think his family is supposed to be the ones doing the stimulating.”

Ronan felt a sinking in his stomach. Ronan didn’t make assumptions, but he acted on instinct. His gut was more reliable than his brain. Something about this situation screamed unsavory.

His father was a relatively happy man before Ronan found him bleeding in the driveway, but even Niall Lynch got angry sometimes. He wouldn’t have learned to fight like he did if he didn’t get angry. When Ronan was younger, Niall’s anger would scare him. His brother, swinging his legs from the couch, would watch Ronan’s nervous brow furrow as their mother slid her hand down Niall’s arm, soothing him quickly and efficiently. She wrapped herself around Niall’s front and led him away. All was quiet in the house after that. Ronan wondered why parents wouldn’t visit their child in the hospital, why they wouldn’t help. He wondered if Parrish’s parents ever got angry.

It might explain some things, actually. Ronan gritted his teeth.

“Do you think he has insurance?”

“How the fuck would I know?”

“I don’t know, sometimes you just know things,” Gansey muttered. “It’s disconcerting, actually.”

Ronan thought he heard a faint buzzing. He and Gansey shared a look and glanced around the dim room. Gansey, leading with his ear, found the yellow hospital bag on the side table and sorted through it. From it, he retrieved a small, ancient cell phone that Ronan hesitated to call a phone at all. It looked an awful lot like a pager from before the new millennium. It vibrated loudly. Gansey clicked a button and held it to his ear.

Across the room, Ronan could hear the loud, annoyed voice of someone. They seemed unreasonably irritated. Gansey held the phone away from his ear and glanced at Ronan, startled. Gansey cleared his throat. He spoke into the phone.

“Yes, uhm, good morning. I’m Gansey, Adam’s … classmate. Yes, just Gansey. Oh, Adam is, well. Are you sitting down? I hope you’re sitting down. Adam is in the hospital —” Gansey was interrupted by another flurry of shouting “— No, I don’t know how he got here. He’s unconscious. A what? I don’t know what a — oh, do I go to Aglionby, you mean? Oh, I’m so sorry. We can come to pick you up if you’d like? Did I say something wrong? I’m sorry, I meant no offense. I only meant if you can’t drive here, we were probably going to go get some things anyway, and wouldn’t mind picking you up. What’s your name again? Oh, that’s an … interesting name. My apologies. Yes. Yes, I believe we can find our way there. Alright, we’ll —”

Gansey cut off and stared at the phone. “Oh, it’s dead.”

“What banshee called Parrish?”

“One called Blue, apparently.”

Gansey deposited the black screened phone back in the bag. Without much tact, he continued looking through Parrish’s things. He pulled out a faded red Coca-Cola T-shirt and held it in front of him. He looked at it curiously. Ronan looked at Parrish's still body only two feet from him. The rain outside did well to fill the silence, but he felt very cold. It was as if a ghost slipped past his back.

“Tell me we’re not picking her —” Ronan started.

“She’s his girlfriend and she doesn’t have a car to drive all the way over here —”

“Stop it, no.”

“Nobody told her what happened, and maybe she can help with this stimulation program! She deserves to —”

“Deserves to what? Learn I let her boyfriend get lost in his own personal hell dimension? Fuck no, Dick.”

“She doesn’t need to know.”

“How do we explain how we know him? We’re not friends with Parrish.”

“I was his friend.”

“You sat next to him in history class and you’re suddenly friends?”

“I wanted to be friends.”

“He doesn’t need a hero, man. I know you want to help, but he’s not getting out of that place.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know.”

“Have you ever tried finding them after you wake up? Maybe —”

“I tried to save Noah, too, and he fucking died!” Ronan shouted. Gansey deflated. “I’m not going through that shit again, Gansey. You can go find this Violet chick on your own. I’m going home.”

“It’s Blue.”

Ronan waved him off and swung the hospital door open. Gansey chased after him.

“How are you getting home?”

“I’ll call a cab,” Ronan said, not looking at him. He stalked down the bright white corridor, earning the attention of nurses as he passed. One of them shushed him. “Stop shouting, Dick, you’re disturbing the patients.”

Ronan spent every waking moment pretending he didn’t watch people die every night, and for the past several hours, acknowledging that fact was all he’d been doing. His head pounded. His heartbeat rapidly and irregularly, threatening to crawl out of his throat. Little knives were stabbing at his skin and he wanted to strip it from his bones and step out of it like a suit. He wanted to set himself and his car and the city on fire just to be left alone. Instead, he drank.

Drinking was a tricky coping mechanism, and not for the reasons Gansey lectured him about. If you’re drinking to forget something, you’re banking on the fact that if you drink enough, you won’t remember thinking about that something in the morning. That doesn’t mean you aren’t thinking about that something while you’re still drinking. In Ronan’s case, he was banking on the slim hope that he might not remember dreaming, or might not dream at all. So he drank and fell asleep with noise-canceling headphones around his head, breaking his eardrums with music, loud and obnoxious. He hoped to grasp the notes like a rope if he fell too deep.

Ronan used to be a lot more like Gansey. Only a few years ago, there was a Ronan with skin unadulterated by pale white scars and dark lines of ink, on with the smile of a child that had seen rain for the first time after a long summer. When the dreams started, he was younger and optimistic. He used to think he was supposed to save the people he met in his dreams. He fancied himself Orpheus, questing through the dark to save Eurydice. It was his mother’s favorite myth. He thought it was destiny.

That was before Niall Lynch’s blood painted the concrete at Ronan’s feet. Before Noah smiled sadly and pressed pale lips to Ronan’s forehead before letting a storm of night terrors steal him away from Ronan’s shaking fingertips. After, Ronan drank himself so deep he was swimming. The amber burned in his blood and he fell asleep.

That first night after Noah, Ronan found himself in the forest. That’s where he found himself now.

Sometimes he felt like his dreams were chasing him like the dead were chasing him, and this forest was the safe place in that game of tag. He called it Cabeswater because the trees told him that was its name. He knew by now that the forest was his dreamscape, the place where Ronan’s own dreams, uncorrupted by the dead, were formed. If Ronan were to die and some poor, new bastard had to play the role of psychopomp, this would be the arena. There were monsters in Cabeswater too. Inky, terrible things that frightened him. But these days, they observed Ronan as a king. Here, Ronan was no Orpheus. He was Osiris, waiting for the dead to come to him.

He stood in a grassy meadow outside the treeline. Cabeswater went on endlessly on either side of him. A flock of ravens flew from trees. Distantly, Ronan could hear his music, its rhythm uneven. He could leave if he wanted to. He stepped forward, straight into the woods, and time became irrelevant. The distance became nothing as he walked, stepping over rouge roots and mossy rocks, the forest growing ever larger and changing as it wished. He eventually came to a small clearing where ran through, where he knew he would find what he was looking for.

The little Orphan Girl was hunched over her furry knees drawing pictures in a patch of dirt. She used her teeth to peel mica from a rough stone in her hand.

“Hey, stop that,” Ronan scolded. “You’re gonna fuck up your teeth.”

Orphan Girl grinned and dropped her things. She practically galloped to Ronan’s waist. Immediately, she reached into his pockets. Ronan swatted at her, but not before she pulled keys from it and ran away to the center of the clearing, the keys dangling in her mouth. They weren’t Ronan’s keys. They were Gansey’s.

Ronan sat on the grass and started pulling up blades. A large raven with three eyes flew down and landed on Ronan’s shoulder. “Kerah,” Chainsaw screeched.

“You’re hiding from something again,” Orphan Girl accused. Ronan growled. “Did you hear that, bird? _Kerah_ is afraid of ghosts.”

“ _Kerah_!” A noise like the sound of wind passed from Chainsaw’s beak. It whistled in Ronan’s ear. He shooed her. She landed on the grass and began pecking at Ronan’s bracelets.

“Ghosts don’t exist.”

“Then what do you call him?”

Him being Noah.

Rather, the flimsy abstraction of Noah that peered his translucent head around trees in Cabeswater whenever Ronan was missing him. Invoking his memory summoned him unfailingly. Ronan frowned when Noah appeared next to him. Noah smiled childishly and scratched Chainsaw under her beak.

“A memory.”

“You’re stupid,” Orphan Girl said.

“Aw, don’t be mean,” Noah chimed. His voice was wispy. “I think you’re very smart, Ronan.”

“Thanks.”

“An asshole, but at least you’re smart.”

Ronan chucked Orphan Girl’s saliva covered rock at him. It passed right through his body. Noah looked affronted nonetheless.

“I didn’t come here to be accosted.”

Orphan Girl folded her arms in reproach. Then she began to bite Gansey’s keys in earnest. Chainsaw saw their shine and flew to fight her for them.

“You don’t want me to talk, because it’s easier,” Noah said. Ronan didn’t look at him. “But at the same time, you want me to talk, because you’re feeling lost.”

“Don’t preach at me. Don’t make me sound like some bastard straying from the path of God.”

“But aren’t you? You just drank yourself into a stupor because you don’t know how to save that boy. I think God would call you lost.”

Ronan whipped his head around, looking for another rock to throw. Instead, he found Noah gazing sadly at the grass. Something in Ronan’s chest hurt, and in response, Cabeswater grew daisies and wildflowers around Noah. Delighted, Noah began to pick them one by one. He set them beside each other and tied the stems, and continued in this way.

“You could have saved me, Ronan,” Noah said, smiling. “You lied to Gansey. You could have saved me.”

His fingers twined green stems together over and over. A bruise began to appear on Noah’s temple. At first, Ronan thought it mirrored the bruise on Parrish’s face, but as it grew darker and larger and bloodier, he was astounded at having forgotten. That mark was where the hard wheel of Noah’s own skateboard collided with his head, again and again and again. After Ronan dragged Gansey out of bed at two in the morning and drove a hundred miles per hour to the forest outside Henrietta, after he dug his hands through fresh dirt and pulled Noah’s body away from the tight grip of the earth by a pale hand, that bruise was painted behind Ronan’s eyelids for months.

The wind howled in Ronan’s ears. He searched for that pounding music, but the rustling of trees hid the beat from him. He didn’t want to be here anymore. The sun was shining and the birds were singing, and Cabeswater was a safe place, but he didn’t want to be here anymore. Any moment now, the nightmares would turn on him. They’d find him and claw at his clothes, spread inky blood over his skin, and the ghosts would paw at his arms, begging him to save them. He wanted to wake up. He wanted to find the soft hands of his mother and run them down his cheeks, but Aurora was no ghost. Not yet.

“You just didn’t have enough time,” Noah continued. The wind stopped. “You could have saved me, but it’s not your fault you couldn’t. You remember. Gansey read you the autopsy report. I wasn’t alive when I was buried. I didn’t suffocate. I didn’t linger. It only took a few minutes for the blood to hemorrhage in my brain, for the damage to become irreparable.

“You could have saved me, maybe. But most times, death is just death. Nobody knows this more than you. Even untimely, death is just death. You could have saved me, but you’ll never know how. Because it was just too fast.”

Ronan was crying. Noah came to him and rested a crown of blooming daisies and blue wildflowers on his head. Noah’s hands cupped Ronan’s cheeks. He brought his lips to Ronan’s forehead and lingered there.

“Whelk killed me. Not you. You can’t keep blaming yourself,” Noah whispered. “You have another chance now. Adam has time. You can save Adam if he lets you.”

“How?”

Orphan Girl trotted to Ronan’s side. She gripped his forearm and pulled him up. Ronan wiped his face with his shirt.

“Everyone has their own dreamscape, but somehow, you can enter theirs. How do you find a dreamscape.”

“It’s not like they have fucking place addresses, kid.”

“You’re stupid.”

Ronan threw his hands up. “What do you want from me? I don’t know how I get to a dream, I just go to sleep and I’m there.”

“ _Classical education_ ,” Chainsaw mimicked in Gansey’s exasperated tone.

“Okay, fine, tell me. How do I get to a dream?”

“I don’t know,” Orphan Girl said.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“We are you,” Orphan Girl explained, helpfully. Ronan gave her a look that asked for him to be treated as if he knew nothing. “We are you. We come from your dreams. We only know what you know. It’s how we know you better than yourself, _Kerah_. What are your dreams trying to remind you?”

Ronan thought about this. Inspiration struck. He put his hands out to Orphan Girl.

“Keys,” he said. “Hand ‘em over.”

Orphan Girl scrunched her face together and hid her hands behind her back. The keys jangled behind her. “No, I want them.”

“I’ll get you new keys.”

“Liar.”

Noah plucked the keys right out of Orphan Girl’s hands and held them above her head. She squawked and jumped to reach them. Noah tossed them to Ronan. Noah smiled at him. The bruise on his face was fading.

Why would Ronan have Gansey’s keys? Maybe he was supposed to be in Gansey’s car. Ronan didn’t have a clue why Parrish would be in or around the Pig, but if he was, the car wouldn’t move without the keys.

Maybe Parrish needed a getaway.

Ronan closed his hands around the keys. He envisioned himself in the passenger seat of the Pig. He felt the cracked upholstery. He thought about who in the world might be dreaming of Gansey’s car at this very moment. When he opened his eyes, Cabeswater was falling away into inky darkness and Ronan was steadily falling.

Adam thought he was driving. He thought he was moving away from Antietam Lane. But it followed him. It stalked after him, quick and unyielding. Adam was driving, but he hadn't moved from this spot. The car slowed and slowed, and suddenly seemed to drive slower than it would have standing still. Adam hit the car horn in frustration.

Horrible EDM suddenly blasted from the car stereo and Adam jumped in his seat. In the passenger seat appeared Ronan Lynch.

“Never pegged you for a car guy, Parrish,” Ronan said. He looked exhausted.

Adam frowned. “Why, because I can’t afford them?” Ronan remained unimpressed.

“If you had to have money to be a car guy, oldsmobile magazines would go out of business,” Ronan said. “Last I checked, it’s not like poverty class can’t have ambitions?”

No, Adam thought, but it sure is a lot harder to accomplish them.

Ronan shrugged out a kink in his shoulders and slouched in the seat. Adam turned his eyes back towards the steering wheel, not wanting to look at him too closely. Ronan hurt his eyes a little bit. In the dream, Ronan looked high definition. He looked loud, in a way Adam couldn’t properly comprehend.

“I’m even more surprised that you have a thing for Gansey’s car. What is this thing doing in your dreams?” Ronan asked. He quirked an eyebrow.

Adam mentally hit himself, but he actually felt it, and he was pretty sure Ronan did too. This was Richard Campbell Gansey III’s car. The bright orange Camaro seemed to break down more often than it turned on but drew eyes nonetheless. Adam had seen it a handful of times around Henrietta, in the Aglionby parking lot, broken down on the side of the road, parked outside Nino’s.

There was a day when Adam had nearly stopped his bike to offer his assistance with fixing the thing, but something turned him away. If Adam let himself admit it, there was not a day when he did not regret helping. He did not know why.

He must have said something aloud, or perhaps Ronan could simply feel what Adam had been thinking because he nodded in agreement.

“He probably would have reeled you in then and there, you’d never be able to escape,” Ronan chuckled, eyeing the dashboard proudly. Something about the look in his eye intrigued Adam. He did not know what it meant. The intrigue, however, was overpowered by annoyance. “That asshole has been trying to get your attention for the past year. If he found out you fixed cars, he’d never let you go.”

Adam did not know what to make of that. Gansey had always seemed like a different species, a higher being that Adam could never be. Secretly, Adam hated him. Even more secretly, Adam desperately wanted to be him.

He definitely should have stopped his bike that day. Maybe then, things would have been different. Maybe he would not be here, dying, but that was stupid to think. There was no point in existentialism when you were on your deathbed.

“Can you stop doing that?” Adam twitched. He didn’t want to panic. That didn’t go well last time Ronan was in the room.

“What?” He didn’t mean it as a question.

“Stop knowing everything. If this is a dream, then it’s my dream, in my head, and I’d prefer you stay out of it if you’re going to stick around.”

“You’re the one projecting. I can’t hear it if you don’t want me to,” Ronan said. He paused. He needed to say something, and Adam could see him struggling with the words. He seemed a man of action. Adam didn’t let him have the moment.

“You said I’m supposed to move on,” Adam started. The words came out shaky. Ronan turned to him. “Is this a dream or is this real? Am I really dying?”

“Yes, yes, and the jury's out on that last one.”

“I have several questions.”

Ronan paused. Adam could pinpoint the moment he came to a decision. His face steeled, suddenly confident where he was not previously. “I can answer them, probably. But you have to do something for me in return.”

Adam nodded. He didn’t like assistance. But he could make a deal.

“Last time I tried to talk to you about this, you went awol. Just thinking about it, you’re bringing nightmares,” Ronan said, looking around through the many windows.

Adam heard a shout from behind him. He knew that voice. He suddenly felt small. Beginning to panic, he tried to turn his head, but Ronan’s calloused hand caught him firmly by the side of the head. Ronan pointed two fingers at Adam’s eyes, then pointed them at his own. Adam remembered to breathe.

“We have to find your safe place. Your dreams are riddled with nightmares, more than most, but there are pockets of light. Think about a place where you feel safe. A dream that made you feel warm. And we’ll go to it.”

“How do I even do that?”

“These are your dreams. You manifest them. You have to make this safe place, but I can make sure you get there once it exists. So, where are we going?”

Adam closed his eyes. Ronan’s palm was warm against his neck. His thumb caressed Adam’s cheekbone. Adam wanted to pull away, but it was the most real thing he’d felt since he entered this strange place. But Adam could still hear that shouting. He could feel the crippling presence of Antietam Lane behind him. He couldn’t think of a place where he was comfortable.

“I don’t know how to think of anything else,” Adam admitted, frustrated. “I don’t think there is anything else. I don’t have a comfortable memory.”

“Then make one up, whiz kid.”

That, Adam decided, he could do. He closed his eyes again, the weight of Ronan’s hand and the cold leather beneath his fingers anchoring him to something outside of reality. He liked this car. He wondered what it would be like to drive it far, far away from here. Adam had never been outside Henrietta. He’d never even been hiking. There’s a road just past Aglionby that Adam knows passes miles and miles of empty farmland. Somewhere beyond it is another world, where trees and wildflowers run over the hills. He imagines it.

Ronan pulled his hand away.

“You know how to drive stick?” Ronan asked. Adam shook his head. He’d driven the car before, he thought. But it didn’t seem to get very far.

He must have projected again because Ronan smirked and pulled a set of keys from somewhere. He loitered them in front of Adam’s face.

“Did you forget that cars need keys, Mr. Parrish?”

Adam scowled and snatched the keys from him.

“Okay, so—” Ronan delved into an oversimplified lesson on how to drive manually. He pointed at Adam’s feet and told him to use both pedals, and he adjusted Adam’s hand on the gear shift. Perhaps it was because Ronan was the only real thing Adam could find, because of his magic and his ability, but even though Adam had never felt Ronan’s hands before, his skin felt as real as anything Adam could remember. In another situation, Adam would have flinched away from the contact, but Ronan’s touch was grounding. He let it wash over him like cold water and stabilize him.

Ronan told him to drive and Adam pressed on the gas. The engine revved and Ronan cascaded into a string of curse words Adam had never thought of pairing together. It did not sound angry. In a funny way, it sounded a lot like poetry.

After Ronan chided him on stalling the car and insulted his ability to learn— _come on, Parrish, I thought you were supposed to be some kind of genius_ —Adam rolled his eyes and asked for another explanation. Finally, Adam was driving away and away from Antietam Lane and the doublewide, down a road he did not recognize and was sure did not really exist. Ronan put on some horrible EDM music, again, but kept it low enough so he could correct Adam. They rolled down the windows and felt a phantom breeze. Adam felt a little more real. Physics was playing somewhat of a role again. Adam felt a little more alive.

He knew that he was not driving away from the trailer forever, because it always followed him, to school and work and everywhere else. He could never escape it in life, so he could never escape it here, but he could drive and drive and drive with Ronan yelling at him in the passenger seat and feel a little farther away from it anyway. The trailer would find him again. Now, though, he was only driving.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have an update, three months late. I am so sorry.
> 
> I only get through college hoping Adam Parrish will be proud of me, but it is leeching all my energy away from my frail, cardiac-challenged body. Your friendly neighborhood classics major is here to tell you that Ancient Greek is a fucking nightmare of a language and I'm so glad I've finished all the Greek courses that exist at my university. I should've taken Latin instead. It would've been easier. Also, don't be under the impression that creative writing is an easy major, because my god, I'm swamped with projects.
> 
> I feel like this chapter didn't quite fit the bill for the surrealist approach. I had trouble moving from one scene to the next. Then again, I've been looking at this chapter every few weeks, so I might just be bored with it. What are your thoughts? I enjoy feedback! It makes me better.
> 
> For all 10 of you who read this story consistently, thank you very much!!! My humblest apologies. Here is the link to a Spotify playlist a I made specifically for this fic: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3l3PqKAARx9yCYyvvmdcax
> 
> The songs don't fit a specific vibe so much as they all together have had some sway in the writing of particular scenes. Hope you enjoy!
> 
> \- C.M.
> 
> P.S. -- There is substance abuse in this chapter. As someone who has watched friends, family, and myself go through it, I want to emphasize that this is not a great coping mechanism. It does not work. My version of Ronan Lynch in this fic makes bad decisions. That is one of them. Please take care of yourselves, my lovelies <3

**Author's Note:**

> This story is an excuse for me to wax poetic about dreams, nightmares, and forgiving yourself. I'm going to really focus on the ways these characters support each other.
> 
> \- C.M.


End file.
